NEW CHAPTER

NEW CHAPTER

I got the strong feeling this past month that, after all the talk and ink, the long-awaited and much-discussed GPLv3 is finally starting to happen. I don’t just mean it has finally appeared, which would be a pretty safe assessment, considering that the final version has indeed reached the public. I’m speaking more about the sudden emergence of real momentum and a sense that the hypothetical is finally approaching the inevitable.

The unfortunate part is that Linus Torvalds and the Free Software Foundation were never able to reach an agreement on the DRM provisions and other objections Linus had with the latest GPL. The promising signs of a rapprochement between the kernel developers and the FSF (as described in this space in the June 2007 issue) turned out to be too much reading of tea leaves. In a posting to the kernel list, Linus stated once more his objections to moving the Linux kernel to GPLv3, and he had some strong remarks for the FSF.

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Latest statistics from Black Duck Software show version 2 of the General Public License (GPLv2) sliding in popularity. Just under half of all the open source projects contained in the September 2009 statistics used the GPLv2.